Most people are afraid of my neighbor but not me, he is my friend. Actually I’m not sure if people are afraid of him exactly but rather they just pretty much ignore him. He and I hang out on his porch most evenings and as neighbors stroll by they wave and call to me, "Hi Kevin, how was school today?" or "how's your mom doing?” Then they stroll on down the block without a kind word or even a look at my friend. He is a really tall man with big (and I mean big) broad shoulders. He has what people call salt and pepper hair which he keeps trimmed fairly short. I'm probably not a good judge but I would say he is fifty-ish. Not exactly a man who is easy to miss.

When we first met I learned that he had a speech impediment. I acted like I knew what that was when he asked me but I had to look it up as soon as I home. He could talk but it was real hard to understand him so he taught me sign language. I took me a little while to get the hang of it but now we talk about all kinds of things in life. One night he told me stories of his wrestling days. He explained how wrestling had caused his deformed ears, cauliflower ears he called them. He said he had also had his jaw broken so many times and wired shut for so long that it made it so he couldn't really talk anymore. He seems sad when he talks about the past as his broad shoulders droop even more than usual. I asked him if he missed his wrestling days. We sat on the porch in silence for a long time as he stared across the street into his past. After some time I heard him answer ever so softly, "No." then a couple of minutes later, almost imperceptibly, "Yes." He looked me in the eyes then and said, as clearly as he could, "That's when people still saw me. Now, thanks to this" he gestured at his head and mouth, "I have become invisible, like I have no face."